This blog was initially launched as a resource for Ron Mohring's Working Class Literature course. New poems are posted irregularly. All are welcome to share and comment on poems by and about work and the working classes. To suggest a poem for inclusion or a book for the recommended reading list, please email ron dot mohring at gmail dot com; put Working Class Poems in your subject line. Thanks.

10.25.2010

if she could use
her hands to fasten
a button twist a knob
scribble a letter
to tell me she dreams
about tailpipes
thirteen parts assembled
again and over
like a broken dance
of two palms
stroking rubbery backs
fingers bowing
to partners swollen
with gnarled collapse
snapping delicate cylinders
joints in place
for the socket and bend of it
as she dismantles her own
one occupation at a time
even before they tell her
with owing fists
to speed the quota
because flesh is thick
in a town that has no fire
just cold furnaces
and breadsinners
with lottery eyes or
bingo on their breath
so where can she go
if the work of her hands
is meant for reaching
the grasp of all things falling

10.18.2010

Today it's going to cost us twenty dollarsTo live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,Bus fare, rosin for your mother's violin.We're completing our task. The tip I leftFor the waitress filters downLike rain, wetting the new roots of a childPerhaps, a belligerent cat that won't let goOf a balled sock until there's chicken to eat.As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this:You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of applesFrom a fruit stand, and what coinsare passed on help others buy pencils, glue,Tickets to a movie in which laughterIs thrown into their faces.If we buy a goldfish, someone tries on a hat.If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.A tip, a small purchase here and there,And things just keep going. I guess.

10.11.2010

The workmen over and above the fencefit bricks, lift mortar, slap it accuratelyin place. Guilty by sitting idle, Iimagine they envy my luxuryof doing nothing until I rememberthe days I had my hands full of shovel,the dragline plowing the ditch of a sewerthrough a future subdivision and howI pitied those who walked by our workwith no apparent occupation,denied the pleasure of making something,piece by piece—even if it would soon
be buried—they would depend upon.

10.04.2010

The afternoon wound down. The pool was calm.Some childrem played around the emptied trough.The small, low town was far enough awaybehind the trees to look as though it werea thread of road, some boxes, a toy steeplepropped upon a branch. The parents bustled into cocktails when the lightning bugs began.The children had the country on their shoes.Outside, they watched the greasy farmhand seta tractor's broken axle in the half-light.They trailed him with a hundred aimless questionsuntil an aunt corralled them in the house.A wobbly mother volunteered to fightthe crusted shoes and knotted laces off.Outside, the farmhand closed his day. He crouchedbeside the rifle hanging from the fenceand scratched the pig's broad head, then slowly roseas though he'd left a teacup balanced there.After the shot, the farmhand turned to spit,and, with a rag, wiped from his dirty handswhat must have been the day, being done with it,and turned then to the night, and night's demands.